Sterile bedside drainage bag



Nov. 16, 1965 E, D, G, GARTH 3,2l7,770

STERILE BEDSIDE DRAINAGE BAG Original Filed Jan. 13, 1960 INVENTOR, Ems 6. arf/Z ffsed yiwfgy @www fran/v6.5.

United States Patent O 3,217,770 STERILE BEDSIDE DRAINAGE BAG Ernest D. G. Garth, deceased, late of Summit, NJ., by

L. Chester May, 247 Oakridge Ave., Summit, NJ., and

Andrew B. Young, co-execntors, Philadelphia, Pa. Original application Jan. 13, 1960, Ser. No. 2,245, now

Patent No. 3,079,292, dated Feb. 26, 1963. Divided and this application Oct. 2, 1962, Ser. No. 227,952

1 Claim. (Cl. 150-1) This application is a division of the copending patent application of Ernest D. G. Garth, now deceased, Ser.'

No. 2,245, tiled Jan. 13, 1960, entitled Sterile Bedside Drainage Bag and Method of Making.

The invention of the present divisional application relates to the sterile bedside drainage bag itself. Claims to the method of making the bag appear in the patent which issued from the original application, Ser. No. 2,245, namely, U.S. Patent 3,079,292, issued Feb. 26, 1963.

The bag of the present application is an inexpensive disposable plastic bag having a sealed sterile compartment and is particularly useful in hospitals and the like for receiving fluid drained from patients as through a catheter tube. The plastic bag is transparent and has stamped on its face a series of volumetric markings indicating the liquid contents of the bag at the various levels. The bag has an upper slot o1' hem for receiving a hanger bar so as to be supportable by a hanger on the side of the bed in a level position, thereby permitting an accurate reading of the uid collected in the bag. The upper corner of the bag is stamped with a series of guide lines which run diagonally across the corner of the sealed compartment and indicate where the bag should be cut for insertion of various size drainage tubes. The cutting guide lines are of such length across the corner of the closed sterile compartment of the bag that when the bag is cut along the proper line for the particular size of drainage tube an opening into the theretof-ore closed compartment is provided, the size of which is such that when the drainage tube is inserted diagonally therethrough and then turned to its normal generally vertical position, the cut edges of the opening will form a close fit around the drainage tube, leaving but a small vent for the escape of air as the bag fills up with the drained liquid.

The drainage bag of the present application has an important use in connection with the care and treatment of patients in hospitals or on sick beds elsewhere where the condition of the patient requires the employment of a catheter for tapping the urinary bladder to drain off the fluid therein. In such instances, it is important, of course, that the catheter be free of contamination by microbes and bacteria. It is also important that the bag into which the fluid is to be drained be free from contamination as otherwise there is danger of ascending infection from the bag to the patient by way of the catheter or other drainage tube.

Accordingly, it is the principal object of the present invention to provide an inexpensive disposable sterile bag for bedside drainage use.

The present invention will be clear from a consideration of the following description taken together with the drawing, in which:

FIG. 1 is a perspective illustration showing in simplified form means suitable for making the sterile bag of the present invention;

FIG. 2 is a plan View of a preferred form of the sterile bag;

FIGS. 3 and 4 are cross-section views of the bag along the lines III-III and IV-1V, respectively, of FIG. 2; and

FIG. 5 illustrates the manner in which the catheter or other tube is inserted diagonally into the closed compartment of the bag after the upper corner has been severed along one of the marked cutting lines, and then turned to a generally vertical position to effectively close the opening.

Referring now to FIG. 1, there is shown a transparent plastic tubing being extruded in continuous form from a known type of extrusion machine 12 at a temperature sufficiently high (of the order of 450 F.) to kill any living micro-organisms, such as bacteria, spores, bacilli, and the like. Shortly after being extruded, the plastic tubing 10 may be atttened as by the opposed rollers 14 and 15 into a so-called lay-flat form having seamless parallel edges 16 and 18 running longitudinally of the tubing. Soon after the tubing 10 is rolled into a lay-flat form, it may be passed under a printing roller 20 which prints the same information repeatedly onto the tubing at spaced intervals, such information being that desired for the face of the sterile bag. Included, for example, among such printed information may be a series of volumetric marker lines 22 suitably marked to indicate the liquid content in cubic inches at the various levels Also included in the information printed may be an opaque marker square 24 which may be employed to trigger a bar sealer at the proper instant as later described. Also included among the printed information are a series of diagonal cutting guide lines across one corner of the bag, discussed more fully later.

Following the printing operation, a continuous thin line heat seal may be placed, as by a pressure roller 32, along a longitudinal line running parallel with the axis of the tubing 10 and located a relatively short distance in from the seamless edge 18. The seal 30 divides the tubing 10 longitudinally into a narrow tubular portion or hem 34 and a wider tubular portion 36 lying between the seal 30 and the more remote seamless edge 16.

Thin line heat seals are also placed at spaced intervals transversely to the axis of the tubing. Such transverse seals extend from the seamless edge 16 of the tubing to the seal 30 but not beyond the seal 30, at least not appreciably beyond, so as not to close the hem 34. These transverse seals may preferably be in closely-spaced pairs, such as may be effected by the inverted U-shaped sealing bar which may be driven down by means 41 at instants controlled by a sensing device 42 in response to the interruption of a beam of light 31 by the opaque marker block 24.

A guillotine type of knife bar 43 may be pivoted at 44 and driven by sensing mechanism 45 in timed relation to the forward movement of the lay-flat tubing. The knife 43 is used to sever the tubing 10 completely through from one seamless edge 18 to the other seamless edge 16 along a transverse line located midway between the pair of closely-spaced thin-line transverse seals laid down vby the sealing bar 40. If desired, instead of a pair of closelyspaced thin-line transverse seals, a single wide-line seal may be impressed and the tubing 10 severed along the middle of the such wide seal.

It will be apparent that when the tubing 10 is repeatedly severed transversely to its axis at saced intervals as just described, transparent plastic bags are formed which may accumulate on the platform 61 at the end of the continuous production line illustrated in FIG. 1 and just described.

In FIG. 2 is shown a plan view of the bag 60 formed by the process just described. Such type of bag may, however, also be formed by a different sequence of steps, or by other methods.

It will be seen that the bag 60 comprises a closed or sealed compartment 36a whose width is defined by the distance between the transverse seals 46 and 48 and whose height is delined by the distance between the lower seamless edge 16 and the hem seal 30. Running across the ICC top of the bag 60 above the sealed compartment 36a is a slot or hem 34a open at both ends for receiving a hanger bar by which the bag may be supported from the bed. Hem 34a is, of course, a severed portion of the hem 34 previously mentioned in connection with FIG. 1. One form of bedside bag hanger which may be used to support the plastic bag of the present application is shown, described, and claimed in Garth U.S. Patent No. 2,959,- 386, which issued Nov. 8, 1960 on an application filed Dec. 3, 1957.

The transparent plastic employed for the sterile bag of the present invention may be polyethylene or any other suitable plastic. It is, of course, necessary that the plastice employed be impervious to air, as well as to the liquids to be collected therein, so that the interior of the bag remain's sterile awaiting use.

When the plastic bag 60 is made by a method such as shown in FIG. l and described above, the interior of the sealed compartment 36a is free of bacteria, microbes, bacilli, spores, and other living micro-organisms at the time of manufacture, and being air-tight, the interior of the compartment 36a remains sterile awaiting use.

Guide lines for cutting open compartment 36a are stamped or printed diagonally across at least one upper corner of bag 60, preferably across the upper right hand corner, as illustrated in FIG. 2 by the dotted lines 50 and 52. Each of these guide lines is marked with the size of the catheter tube. For example, line 50 may be marked 3/16 lumen, and line S2 may be marked %2 lumen. Such markings indicate that, to provide an opening for the insertion tinto the bag of a 9/16 lumen catheter tube, the bag should be cut along guide line 50, while for the larger diameter 9/32 lumen catheter tube, the bag should be cut along guide line 52.

After the corner of the bag is severed along the proper guide line for the particular size of catheter to be used, the end of the catheter tube is inserted into the theretofore sealed compartment 36a through the opening at right angles to the cutting guide lines, as shown in FIG. by the solid line representation of the catheter tube 54. After such insertion of the catheter tube 54 into the opening, the tube 54 is moved to a substantially vertical position, as indicated in FIG. 5 by the dot-anddash line representation of the tube, and is held in Athis substantially vertical position by a clamp suitably positioned on the bag hanger which is used to support the bag from the bedrail. The combination of the bag of the present invention with a bag hanger and with the catheter tube supported by a clamp in substantially vertical position at the corner opening into compartment 36a is illustrated in the photograph identified as FIG. y2B appearing at page 488 of the March 1962 issue of The Journal of Urology, vol. 87, No. 3, being part of an article entitled Technical Advances in the Prevention of Urinary Tract Infection.

The advantage of cutting along the diagonal guide lines 50, 52 will now be discussed. The lengths of the guide lines 50, 52 are so chosen that if the tube 54 be inserted into the bag at substantially right angles to the cut guide line, 50 or 52 as the case may be, the opening into the previously sealed compartment 36a is appreciably larger than the right-angled cross-sectional area of the tube 54. However, when the inserted tube 54 is moved to occupy the substantially vertical position which it will occupy during use, the tube 54 lls substantially the entire opening. Stated another way, the lengths of the guide lines 50, 52 across the corner of the compartment 36a are made such that the diagonal cross-sectional area of the tube along the cut guide line is substantially equal to the area of the opening. The closing of the diagonal opening by the vertically positioned tube is not so complete, however, as to prevent air from escaping from the compartment 35a as the compartment lls with the draining liquids.

The optimum length of each cutting guide line across the corner of the bag and within the limit of the compartment 36a may be expressed as equal to 1rd+2 cos a where d equals the outer diameter of the catheter tube to be inserted and a equals the acute angle between the diagonal guide line and a line drawn parallel to the folded edges 16, 18 of the bag. The equation given above merely says that the optimum length of the cut made across the corner of the compartment 36a should be equal to the diagonal periphery of the tube along the line of the cut when the tube is in a vertical position.

While the preferred embodiment of this invention has been described in some detail, it will be obvious -to one skilled in the art that various moditications may be made without departing from the invention as hereinafter claimed.

Having described the invention, what is claimed is:

A bedside drainage bag for hospital use, said bag being formed of transparent plastic tubing and having a generally rectangular fluid-receiving compartment and an adjacent hanger-receiving slot, said Huid-receiving compartment being completely closed and sterile pending use, the walls of said fluid-receiving compartment being formed of a continuous sheet of said plastic tubing, the periphery of said compartment being defined by heat seals and folds in the tubing.

References Cited by the Examiner UNITED STATES PATENTS 2,125,318 8/1938 Salsberg.

2,878,849 3/ 1959 Lingenfelter et al 150--3 2,886,036 5/1959 Price 12S-275 3,001,565 9/1961 Beach 150-1 OTHER REFERENCES T win-tube Adhesive, Modern Packaging, 7/ 56, p. 82,

FRANKLIN T. GARRETT, Primary Examiner, QEORGE O.. RALSTFON 

